Fen Drayton Fog Lith Prints: Part II

 To follow on from yesterday's work I had a quick session making another print from this series of images taken on the Fen Drayton RSPB. 

This image illustrates the challenges of getting the snatch point correct. In many of the past images it was a matter of waiting for the infectious development to proceed up reed stalks or tree branches until the form was well developed and making sure the highlights did not catch up and begin infectious development. 

This one has a mass of trees int he midground made indistinct by the fog. I also wanted to make sure the ripples in the reflection would remain identifiable. In this reflection the bonus would be to get the details of the tree branches. 

Again, I made a series of three images with different exposure times. I set up a square crop and set the aperture to f8 to give me an Evof 3.1  (ISO 100) in the water on the left corner. 

The best images I managed to snatch at a good time. As mentioned, the diffuse image made the snatch point difficult to get right as this diffusion of the image meant the infectious development would spread and create a black mass rapidly. Having heated the developer in the microwave made it all move extremely fast. 

scan007
f8 32 sec

This first image is about perfect for snatch point. Lots of detail throughout. The lighter exposure keeps the highlights brighter. 

scan006
f8 64 second

The image above shows the development encroaching on the detail, but it is good enough and adds some mystery. 

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f8 32 sec + 32 sec burn above the waterline

This last one was the first print I developed. It was a warning shot about the difficulty of finding the snatch point. The developer was freshest and hottest, and the print had the most exposure. All this conspires to make a very rapid infectious development. A black mass with an added pip of infectious development at the end of a tree branch. 

This could be a candidate for adding sea salt to the developer as I did in the past. The effect, at the time, seemed to be to slow the development and make it proceed more evenly. 

Stay tuned there are probably two or three more candidates in this series and then of course some toning.